COMPANY HEADQUARTERS – TOBY’S OFFICE – LATER Paula, Toby and NATHAN walk to get a refreshment. In the example just mentioned we could very well end up with something like this: INT. After that, however, it’s possible to use shorter slug lines. In traditional Hollywood screenplay format, these follow a certain order and pattern.įirst of all, we want to go big when we establish the basics. COMPANY HEADQUARTERS – TOBY’S OFFICE – WATER COOLER –MOMENTS LATER Long shot headings with very specific locations can be a bit of a handful. Can you imagine? PAULA Make it yourselves? TOBY That’s right… PAULA Wow… that’s tough… What About Shorter Slug Lines?Īs we can see from the examples above, shot headings can sometimes be cumbersome. PAULA How come? TOBY We need to come up with a corporate video. PAULA How’s everything going? TOBY Not great… I’m worried about today’s work. COMPANY HEADQUARTERS – ELEVATOR – MOMENTS LATER Toby and Paula stand inside the packed elevator. This is to stress that these will be two little moments instead of a single one. Also note that we’ve divided the description of the employees in dark suits and Paula noticing Toby. The final notation is ‘CONTINUOUS ACTION’ which means that the previous shot and this one are continuous in time.Īs you can see, ‘Toby’ is no longer capitalized but ‘PAULA’ is. Note that the shot heading includes more information: we’re not only inside the building, we’re inside the lobby. We’ve done several new things with our screenplay format. PAULA Hi Toby! TOBY (noticing her) Oh hi Paula! From within the crowd, PAULA sees Toby and approaches. Employees in dark suits everywhere, moving towards the elevators. COMPANY HEADQUARTERS – LOBBY – CONTINUOUS ACTION Toby walks through the lobby of the building. Ok, so we have Toby approaching a corporate building and sighing. We’ve also capitalized his sigh specific sounds and effects are always capitalized. Later on, we’ll write his name normally and not all caps. We do this the first time we show this character, as a sort of introduction. Note that we’ve capitalized the name of our character. COMPANY HEADQUARTERS – MORNING TOBY, a thirty-something employee with a disheveled suit looks up at the building and SIGHS. We can add a bit more specifics, like this: EXT. It takes place outside a corporate building. COMPANY HEADQUARTERS – MORNINGĪs we can see, we’ve rapidly established the basics of what our scene is about. It establishes the location and time of day. A shot heading is the beginning of a scene. The initial line a reader of a script will see is usually a shot heading. This way, a two-hour movie will require a 120-page screenplay, more or less and so on. A page in a screenplay is usually a minute on-screen. The action happens in the present tense, as it’s happening in the ‘now’. Dialogues are extremely important and tightly crafted. You’ll soon notice that the prose is quite lean. Try to pick up several screenplays of your favorite Hollywood films. A good way to learn this style is to read some screenplays. This means that action description is short and sweet. Screenplays will usually employ rather lean language. The title page can be as simple as something like this: TOBY AND BUNNY STUDIO Written By IgnacioS Lean Writing More elaborate hard covers are usually put in by the manager, agent, producers etc. There is usually a title page in the same white paper and that’s it. The middle hole is left empty.Ĭovers are seldom used. The script is then bound with two brass brads, one in the top and one in the bottom. The screenplay is usually three-holed on the left margin. It’s actually quite a simple presentation: Paper is typical white 8.5 by 11 inches. Paper and CoverĪ finished screenplay is printed out and presented. The typical font in a script is Courier, Courier New or, more pointedly, Courier Final Draft. Very well, what is the Hollywood standard? Let’s take a look and start with the basics. The same can’t really be said about more local approaches to script formatting in other countries. We really can’t go wrong if we closely stick to Hollywood screenplay format. Since the U.S market is so important, it naturally influences many other markets worldwide. This is standard format in the film and television industry in the United States. If we want to play in the big leagues we really need to learn Hollywood format. There are different ways to format a script, that’s for sure. This post has been updated in September 2021. We’ll create a fictional story to explain the different issues involving the format of a finished script. In this article we’ll take a look at how to format a script. Otherwise extraordinary content may be encumbered by weak formatting, losing its potency for a prospective reader.
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